I had a chat with a co-worker one time about Bitcoin. It was just the two of us in the office and talking/getting to know each other is completely acceptable at my work; There is a lot of down time at the job and moral is important. Also, Bitcoin does come up in the context of our work sometimes and he would probably benefit from knowing how it works anyways. So we are chatting and I am explaining the basics of Bitcoin to him. He seems interested.

I go to my work desktop and I show him one of those websites that generates a paper wallet for you. I generate a key pair and print a single piece of paper that has a QR code for the privk and a QR code for the address. I then use my personal phone and send about $10 worth of bitcoin to the address. I show him the transaction in a mempool explorer and use it to explain how Bitcoin works. I then hand him the paper wallet/piece of paper, telling him he can have it and that he is now "off zero" once the transaction confirms.

Overall, I didn't think anything of the conversation and I thought I had done a good job trying to orange pill someone. He seemed responsive to it all. Whole thing took maybe 20 minutes.

The following week, my supervisor calls me in to his office and I learn that the coworker made a complaint against me. The complaint was that I used office supplies and my work computer to buy bitcoin while at work. I told my supervisor what I had summarized above. I explained that I did print a single piece of paper and use my work computer to navigate to a website. (Also, while it didn't matter, but I sent bitcoin, I didn't buy it - wasn't he paying attention? lol.) I didn't get in trouble with my supervisor and the supervisor thought the complaint was strange. I told my supervisor that this complaint was petty and I was offended by it, especially since I had shared about a hobby/interest of mine.

This particular coworker had made complaints about me in the past (none that I have got in trouble for) and I always just kept on being friendly to the guy. It is hard for me to hold a grudge and even the coworker is very friendly to me in-person (I have been learning more and more from others that he is not friendly about me behind my back). This complaint was the last for me though. I just don't engage with the coworker now on a personal level, just strictly for business purposes. I just don't trust the guy anymore and I have to protect myself from the toxicity.

So, while talking about Bitcoin didn't really get me in trouble, it was a catalyst for a complaint against me.

And, if you are curious, about another week later, the paper wallet was left on my desk. I swept the sats to a hot wallet.